Brandon was born in Ohio to a mother of Irish heritage who was fourteen years old and living in foster care. She was very low functioning and could not take of a child. Brandon’s father was a thirteen year old of African American heritage and lived with his grandmother. Brandon was hospitalized three times for (failure to thrive) and was placed in his first foster home at age one. Over the next six years, Brandon would be placed in nine more foster homes, three hospitals for emotionally destructive children and have nine evaluations and psychologicals performed on him. Brandon was a terror that could not survive within a home environment. In between his foster home placements, the agency he was placed with decided to allow his mother, now, nineteen along with his maternal grandmother to try and raise him. Brandon was found in the backyard of his grandmothers home emaciated and was placed in the hospital again for (failure to thrive). At age six, Brandon’s mother gave up all rights and terminated her parental rights. He was placed for adoption. Six months latter he was labeled (unadoptable). I heard of Brandon through a friend that was the director of a large adoption agency and after reading his life history, decided to fly to Ohio to meet this child. “After all, how bad could a six year old be?”. After negotiating with the state of Ohio and Pennsylvania, I had Brandon transferred to an agency in Philadelphia, PA. where he was then placed in my home on a six month trial basis to evaluate the prospect of adoption.
His story begins.


Brandon’s story will eventually lead us to our final journey called “ A Family Lost”
Although this last story will not be complete until March 1999 as we will be dealing with the Judicial system and Family court, Civil Court, Criminal Court and the Human Resources department of the US Government. This is still ongoing and will not come to it’s fruition until early 1999.
































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